Summary

This data collection explores the relationship between
homicide and ethnicity in California during 1850-1900. The data are
presented in three files. Part 1, Homicide, includes information on
time, place, location, and cause of the crime for all murder cases in
seven California counties. The relationship between the victim and the
accused, and the race, sex, age, and occupation of each are also
provided. Part 2, Indictment, includes information on criminal charge,
plea, verdict, and sentence for all murder trials in the same seven
counties during the time period. Part 3 provides information on all
prisoners incarcerated in California for murder. Included are age, sex,
ethnicity, place of birth, and occupation of each prisoner, as well as
sentence, disposition of case, years served, and year in which the
prisoner was released.

Citation

McKanna, Clare V. Jr. Ethnicity and Homicide in California, 1850-1900. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-01-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09594.v1

Geographic Coverage

Time Period(s)

Date of Collection

Sample

Data for Parts 1 and 2 are 100-percent samples from seven
California counties. The homicide data (Part 1) were obtained from
historical documents such as coroner's inquest reports, criminal case
files, and newspaper accounts. The indictment data (Part 2) were
obtained from the registers of district and superior courts. Data for
Part 3 are a 100-percent sample of all felons incarcerated for murder
or manslaughter in California, obtained from the registers of the San
Quentin and Folsom prisons.

Universe

Data Source

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1992-01-10

Version Date

2006-01-12

Version History

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 4 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

1992-01-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.